Anyone who has paid attention to local politics for a long time has heard the stories of dead people voting.

You know, the jokes about how “the election isn’t over until the Dunmore Cemetery vote comes in.”

Years ago, a newsroom staffer told us his father voted for years after dying.

Not that we don’t believe him; we do. But when someone says publicly in court that a dead man voted, you tend to believe it more.

Well, we found it — a court reference to a dead man voting — in the Sept. 9, 1941, Democratic primary election for burgess in Dunmore.

Back then, mayors were called burgesses, and primary elections took place in September.

Incumbent Burgess Thomas Ferguson faced Dunmore School Board President Thomas A. Bevelock and three other challengers.

On Election Day, Mr. Bevelock appeared to have won, but problems quickly surfaced tallying votes in Dunmore’s 2nd Ward, 2nd

District.

Just after midnight — polls closed hours earlier — the Lackawanna County sheriff arrived at the precinct after a complaint that the poll officials “were committing a fraud and had not computed their (vote) returns,” according to a court opinion written by county President Judge Will Leach and Judge William R. Lewis, acting as the county Board of Elections. The sheriff gathered up all the election papers and brought the voting machines, records and election officers before the county court.

Because it was late, the court adjourned, but resumed the next day. Precinct Judge of Elections Casper Gaetano, Majority Inspector Andrew Malia and Minority Inspector Charles Banno showed up to complete the returns.

At first, they said they did not need to open the voting machines, then they said they did. They claimed their count was delayed by “political workers,” The Scranton Times reported the day after the election.

Neither machine showed a discrepancy with the open return, the one made available to the public after an election. If the results stood, Mr. Bevelock would win by 11 votes, but something was wrong.

One machine had Mr. Bevelock winning the precinct by 631 votes to 32 for Mr. Ferguson, and that was recorded on the open return, but other signals of fraud showed up.

A Times staffer at the precinct recorded a different vote total on that machine for Mr. Bevelock, 585, which would give Mr. Ferguson the election by 35 votes.

Mr. Banno said the open return was correct, but, asked if he rechecked it, said, “I had such a headache, I couldn’t see straight.” Later, he said he did recheck. Mr. Gaetano wouldn’t vouch that vote totals had been checked and rechecked.

Mr. Gaetano, Mr. Banno and Mr. Malia refused to sign the return sheets, noting on the back of each that they would not sign the return “because there was a discrepancy between the number of voters shown on voting machines and the number of voters shown on the voters check list (register),” The Times reported.

The numbered list of Democratic voters who actually voted, from voter 569 to 678, had all the names in alphabetical order, a mathematical near impossibility. “Thirty pages, about 120 votes, had been signed by persons other than the voters, several pages by the judge of election,” Judges Lewis and Leach wrote in a court opinion in the case.

When the judges did their own tally, they found 765 signatures on the voter register, but 862 votes on the machines.

Three days after the election, attorney Frank J. McDonnell, the former U.S. attorney acting as one of Mr. Ferguson’s lawyers, asked the judges serving as the election board to throw out the precinct votes, which would make Mr. Ferguson the winner.

At a hearing on that request, Dunmore Police Chief John Burke and other witnesses said that after the polls closed they “heard noises which they thought was the machines being operated” eight or 10 times, but the elections officials wouldn’t let anyone inside the precinct, The Times reported.

Mary Gavin was excused from testifying because of a nervous condition, but case lawyers stipulated as to what she would say.

“Counsel agreed that her testimony would be that her father, William H. McCarthy, died in Washington three days before the primary election and was buried in Dunmore on the morning of Election Day,” The Times account said. “His name, however, is listed among those who voted at the primary. His wife’s name, also a resident of Washington, is also listed among the voters.”

One of Mr. Ferguson’s lawyers told the court that three people named Raymond Bass voted even though only two people with that name lived in the district. Six witnesses said they didn’t vote that day while others said their blood relatives voted but lived far out of town, “some in Army camps, some in defense projects out of state.” One woman said her sister-in-law was listed as voting but had lived in Buffalo, N.Y., for the last 12 years.

Mr. Gaetano tried to explain the alphabetical order of many names. He said the notebook he used to record voters filled up so he wrote names on a piece of scratch paper that he lost. The names were subsequently recopied in alphabetical order, The Times reported. Rocco Alexander, a clerk to Mr. Banno, admitted to doing that.

“The voters of Dunmore have already been disenfranchised by a bunch of crooks,” attorney Raymond T. Law, another of Mr. Ferguson’s lawyers, told the court. “If they are permitted to get away with this, we will have repetition of it in every election district in Lackawanna County.”

Judges Leach and Lewis agreed. They downplayed the dead and absent voting, saying “some testimony of witnesses was heard before the court to the effect that certain absent people had been voted and that one person whose funeral was the morning of that day was listed as voting.

“It is questionable whether any such evidence could be admitted. The theory upon which it was heard was that it might cast light on the question of the presence of fraud.”

Nonetheless, the court concluded that with more votes than voters who signed in to vote, “there is no real return of an election.”

“No data exists from which a correct list of the persons who voted could be made. Fraud is apparent upon the face of the returns. Thereupon it is the duty of the return board to throw out the district,” the judges wrote.

Which they did.

Mr. Ferguson, who was also represented by attorney Carlon M. O’Malley, a future district attorney, won the nomination and went on to win re-election unopposed by any Republican. Mr. Bevelock, whose lawyers included attorneys Maurice V. Cummings and Otto P. Robinson, appealed to the state Supreme Court.

The court rejected his appeal.

District Attorney Michael J. Eagen, who was up for election for county judge that November and later became chief justice of Pennsylvania, charged Mr. Gaetano, Mr. Banno, Mr. Malia, Mr. Alexander and machine inspector Anthony Serrenti with conspiring to violate election law.

On Nov. 5, they all pleaded guilty. Mr. Gaetano, Mr. Banno and Mr. Malia were sentenced to three months in jail and $50 fines and had their right to vote suspended for seven years. They were released just before Christmas. Mr. Alexander and Mr. Serrenti were given suspended sentences and ordered to pay court costs.

In the McDonnell home, the case surfaced in conversation now and again for years, said retired attorney Frank J. McDonnell Jr., the son of Mr. Ferguson’s lawyer.

“They stole the election away from Ferguson,” Mr. McDonnell quoted his father. “They almost stole it away from him.”

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